How To Make A Fabric Postcard

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome welcome to the Beehive it is a rainy day in Sisters Oregon we have not had this much rain in a long time and G tells me that it is supposed to rain for the next 20 days but you know what are you gonna do you gotta stay in the Beehive and do some quilting so that's what I'm doing I'm giving you a little bit different perspective with the camera so normally I shoot this way towards my design wall and now I'm shooting back towards the staircase that goes down to the main house and I have to say that although it is raining and grey outside I'm very excited because it is the perfect so day and when I hear that voice inside my head that starts complaining about the weather I also hear my mom who says what are you complain about the weather about nothing you can do about it so yep mom was right so today is a bee hive day and it's going to be an interesting one for those who are wanting to make a fabric postcard because that is what I'm going to do but first let's do a little bit of mail I received sorry for turning my back on you but I received some beautiful cards they are just stunning I mean I have a friend Becky in Mesa who makes her own greeting cards on top of being a quilter and a cross-stitch er of course you know us as quilters we do ten things also but she makes beautiful cards and some of these are just wonderful this is from Donna look at that little Debbi one of my Instagram and blog friends and I was so so blown away when I got a call from the stitching post that there was something waiting for me down at the desk and that someone had left something and so I went down to the stitching post later that afternoon and Marcy happened to be going through the area and she dropped off two scissor fobs that are absolutely adorable look at those maybe against my black shirt here yeah so I have one on this pair of scissors and one on the other oh look at oh that's magnetic to this okay that's good to know but aren't they gorgeous they're black and white beads and and then they have a little B on the end I absolutely love them Marcin they're already way into use and then oh my gosh another fellow Instagrammer Erin Graham who's in the UK sent me this beautiful Manchester B brooch look at that I am going to be wearing that during my class this this summer if not before Thank You Graham so much this is um this is just a treasure and I appreciate all the love and support from everyone of about connecting to cultures and cross teachers and stitchers of all kinds is that we are as a collective group for the most part a very sharing and supportive group and so I happen to tell Elaine how much I loved her cross stitch and she sent me back I'm so excited about this look at this the bookshelf it belongs in someone's library I am so I have so much fun cross stitching this and thank you Elaine for adding to my pile of things that I just love and want to do so now we're going to talk about postcards and I'm not gonna drag this video out with you watching me design and all of that I am NOT a designer per se but the way we raise money for the Arts and sisters is in various ways and the sisters outdoor quilt show supports the arts besides supporting the free quilt show and sisters they support the arts and music in the schools and so they ask all the teachers and people who want to to donate fabric postcards and all of the teachers postcards and some of the other artist postcards are framed and they are framed by Myrna of high desert frameworks in band and let me tell you she is an artist in framing and has won international awards for her framing she really I I can't tell you how beautiful it enhances whatever work you want to have framed so I realized that I had to get on the stick and make my postcard because the deadline was the postcards had to be there by me first holy moly have I got to get moving that means I have to think of something designed something stitch it and have it ready to go to Myrna so she has time she donates all her time and product to frame these postcards it's such a generous heart so that's what I'm doing today and I'm taking you along because I'm not a designer it's always a challenge for me to figure out but just to give you an idea anyone can send in a pose a fabric postcard and they are sold to support the music and arts and if you decide to do that you there's also a Robert Kaufman fabric challenge where they give you a few squares of kauffman fabric and you make a postcard of and send it back to the sisters outdoor quilt show but they all have to be here by May first so if you're interested get on the bandwagon with me so for the last 12 years they raised more than a hundred and four thousand dollars through auction and sale of these postcards they jury the the board juries the postcards and approximately twelve to eighteen of them are custom framed and then Myrna the owner of high desert frameworks brings them out there they're set up and there's a silent auction that goes on all week during the cultures affair out at the high school if your fabric is not juried to be framed it is still being sold at a premium price to be to raise money for the arts and music and we so appreciate that you do that so to give you an idea I will show you the postcards that I have been on the auction and actually one just to give you an idea the framing so here is a postcard by Jean now I figured you know I need to own one of her postcards it's a it's a requirement it hers are so indicative of nature and what's around here so I I had to get that postcard and sometimes it's a knock-down drag-out fight to get those and then this one I I bought this one for G because it was it was auctioned it was auctioning often people were walking by and going what is that but I I recognized it right away that it was a topographical map of sisters so I bid on this and got it and G was out of town he was at the Blues Festival in Portland and I hung it on the wall to to see if he would notice and he walked in the house and he he saw it and he goes oh a map of sisters I knew I'd bought the right postcard by Carla Alexander so that's awesome then Tony Belinda Phillips who was a local artist and teacher she was teaching a postcard class she teaches the postcard class at the stitchin post and one year she was letting people like she had a drawing and you could pick a postcard of hers so I got her postcard and then I took it down and got it framed and this one hangs in our bedroom so you can tell that these tiny little they're the size of an actual postcard our pieces of art little pieces of art okay now here's here's where I have a eye man kapa man Copa I I'm making a confession I made the first year I made a postcard I liked it I loved my postcard but when I saw the framing I actually bid on my own postcard because of myrna's framing she just looks at the postcard and then creates the frame so here's my postcard then I the first postcard I made so it's out of wool and it's used a musical note fabric on the back and then I did bullion stitches all the way around and it's absolutely beautiful but what sent me over the top I hope you can see this is that she actually did a cutout on the mat and the frame not to make you dizzy the frame has musical notes all around it oh well there was no decision to be made I had to have my own postcard back alright I am somewhat embarrassed about that but I did it anyway so I just love how she frames so today I'm going to take you through my process of creating a postcard I have to design the motifs and then put it together and then stitch it because I am mostly a hand stitcher so that's what we're gonna do today so hang in there [Music] so I've chosen my fabric I i tented for the last three years I've been using the same fabric because I just love the musical notes and it's kind of a tone on tone a little bit so I already have a SF 101 pellon product on the back of this fabric so it's kind of stabilized for my hand stitching and then the Tim tex is this kind of somewhat stiff that will be the center of the postcard and I'm basically just using this there I am using this to get the right size background so I'm going to just cut out my piece of fabric I need to design my piece let's get let's get a ruler one should be always prepared huh this is totally our videos are totally casual they're not professional so I'm just going to I don't have to worry about my fabric fraying and it getting too small because I am I have the SF 101 on the back that's kind of gonna make it just perfect there we go I'm using my Tim checks as my guide someone needs a new blade I'm just gonna cut those hairs off okay so now I have the base of my postcard so now I need to make a paper piece that's this size so I know how big to make my design so that's the next step I left out because my cute little notepad was the exact length of my postcard so I'm just going to cut off one end because it's a little bit longer or wider than I need so now I have a piece of paper to make my design on of what I plan on creating on the postcard so stay tuned Harry Connick jr. came in perfect so I guess I'm going to do something along this line I love the bleeding heart is one of my favorite flowers and so I like to put the little hearts in there somehow and naturally the bee so we'll see how it goes so next is to take my scrap piece of which I have someplace here my scrap piece of SF one not SF 101 this is soft fuse my favorite fusible for a wool and to start picking out some scrap wool and doing the designs and putting them on there on my postcard so I I googled the leaves on a bleeding-heart because I when I drew it I knew it didn't look right so I googled that and now I've drawn something more in line with what the leaves look like and then I trace my motifs onto my soft fuse and now I'm going to cut out my mold pieces when I fuse my will with soft fuse i steam it I don't care if it says don't use steam i steam it from the front and the back and I've never really had any problems so sometimes breaking out of the mold so I've got my fabric background fused with a piece of SF 101 and I've got my motifs drawn and fused on wool with the soft fuse and now I'm going to cut them out these fabric postcards are fun to make just in general all the only difference from sending a fabric postcard in a regular postcard is that you have to be sure to go up to the window and habit hand stamped it won't go through the post office machinery but I have received some beautiful fabric postcards and my friend who is the light table Queen at me so my favorite light table she sent me several last year that were just so fun to receive there's my beehive I feel like I need death when I'm cutting these small pieces be sticking my tongue out on one side to balance off my hand cutting these small pieces like my little bleeding heart my leaves out think about a postcard as these are tiny motifs that's so perfect if I do say so myself okay time to peel off the paper off the soft fuse and you have to leave you know at least a quarter inch or more on the outside edge because what you're going to do is take the Tim text and another piece of fabric and you're going to tightly zigzag all the way around the edge to make the postcard so you want to stay away from that edge okay so I've arranged my motifs and now I am ready to do the permanent views go are you ready I hope it's in the right spot the good thing is that these are not giant projects so it's not like you can't just redo it if you had to but given that I've got all these deadlines I need to get this done so now I'm going to turn it over and steam it from the backside get that wool all in there okay so it doesn't look like much because it's just the beginning but here you go now I'm going to do the decorative stitching a la sous bar go I'm going to Spargo it and then I'll show you as I do that I didn't turn my lamp on because it's so dang bright in your eyes and but it provides awesome light to my table so I have my motifs all attached to the post card and the next step for me is to just kind of whip stitch tiny tiny whip stitch around the motifs and that is so that they all stay attached there while I am doing the decorative stitches and so I'm just taking a tiny whip stitch just all the way around because it's not really supposed to show up too much I think this is going to be adorable when it's done and hopefully there will be people bidding on it when it comes to whip stitching the most Chiefs down you want to kind of match the thread to the fabric only because you don't really want it to show up you can either use wool thread you don't need to use a thick thread you want a thin thread and you want it to match so you can either use a wool thread which my friend sandy and BC actually spun these for me onto bobbins off of her became one spool of wool thread is like gonna last you a lifetime and or you can sometimes find them and buy them like this although I have heard that these the maker of these doughnuts it's not doing that anymore but I don't know that for sure but if I don't have a wool thread that matches I use embroidery thread one strand of embroidery thread I'll even use regular sewing spool thread if it matches and because I'm just giving it a tack down so then I can go back and do the decorative stitches on it this project needs to be done and off my list today so that's what I'm doing I'm putting my nose to the grindstone because I have to make another auction wall hanging and I want to be sure to be able to give that some time and it has to be done but the deadline is a couple weeks later than this one no I did not change my top four take two I actually didn't realize that even though you shut the camera off if you left the screen open the battery would run dancing I ran the battery down yesterday so it's the next day and which means that I continued to stitch cuz I'm on a deadline and I am NOT going to actually do a tutorial on the stitches this is just basically a tutorial on how to make a postcard but I will tell you what I have been doing new shirt I did change my shirt today it's my javelina shirt from Tucson so what let me see where's my glasses okay here we are and guess what even though I took another shower and changed my shirt it is still raining outside but I'm really happy because the heating diversified evening is here to fix my heat pump which has been broken since we got back so after the video camera shut down yesterday I continued to stitch and what I did here is for the stem I just did a stem stitch I did little tiny bull yawns around the hearts and I am currently doing a Palestrina stitch around my beehive so this is what's going on this morning also I am using my soos Bargo Bible and I know some of you prefer other stitching Bibles and I totally get that it's how it works for your own particular brain and for whatever reason this old copy the original copy of soo stitching works for my brain so I am on page 68 of the Palestrina not I can what okay here's the problem and I know some of you are just like me you don't want to you don't want to have a lot what am I trying to say yeah you know what I thread your needle so many times so you get this a big honking so thread but then you're sewing your scissors and your other thread to the back of your project really 18 inches I think it's a max and I think this might be 36 inches if I do a yard yard a thread no wonder I am sewing everything to the back of my brush oh okay listen to what I say don't do what I do take three I think I think I'm having moments today I thought I am NOT the best person to video but I cannot make I cannot ask G to make his whole life revolve around our videos so I tried to do some myself which meant that yesterday I let the camera die the battery died doctor camera the battery died on the camera so I could not continue stitch II I mean stitching I could not continue videoing yesterday thus you see me in a different shirt on the same video it's because it's the next day but I had to continue on with the project because I have deadlines and this video is about making a postcard not about stitching so I am NOT going to be demoing my stitches I use this book Seuss bar goes Bible there first everyone has their favorites stitching books and it's how it works for your brain and for some reason this original book is my go to Boca and so this is what I have done I put a stem stitch for the stems I did a little bullion stitch around each heart and I am now working on the Palestrina stitch around the Beehive now that is on page 68 of this book a future video I'll actually do a little stitch demo but I think I have already done it the Palestrina stitch on a previous video so that's what I'm doing now heads in I have you know maybe one should clear this base when you're stitching and do not do what I do do what I say which means you should only be cutting your thread 18 inches at the most but as you can see this this one it's like over a yard long if I go those two hand measuring in yard and so I keep sewing attaching my scissors and other thread to the back of my project but you know it's real in the beat if there's nothing pretty effeminate or professional so that's so today I'm going to finish up this stitching on my post card and then I'll show you how I put it together and it's fun it's fun to send these through the mail you just have to make sure you go to the post office and have them hand stamp it yeah and so if you want to send any to me I'll be really happy to receive them right now it's a little noisy around here because diversified heating is here in that finally fixing our heat pump which one we arrived back a couple weeks ago was broken so we've been jury-rigging heat in this house so that's where we're at so stay tuned well I have finished the stitching as much as I want to do and the Palestrina not just added such lovely texture to my beehive and then I had that little charm that B charm that I found at the West which is a fabulous shop in Tucson Arizona and we did a video on that so if you go look at that shop this was the little B charm that I bought there and that is going on to my postcard so the next step for this postcard making is to make the back so I cut it I cut a piece of muslin the same size as my Tim Tech's which is that hard hard product that will be on the inside of the postcard that will give it some heft and even though for this particular postcard you don't see the back because it gets framed I am going to make the back look like a regular postcard to make it look you know how you would if you made a postcard and wanted to send it to your friend so I use a micron point zero one pin and I'm going to make a little line and then I like to always this is just for my own pleasure I like to put a little square like where the stamp would go just like a real postcard so there's the back of my postcard and so this would be where you would either side you'd write the address of who you were dressing it to and the other side is the message now my message is going to be covered up because this card particular card will be framed but I'm going to just write on here a secret message I know it's silly cos no one's ever gonna see this but I know it'll be there in there and it says may your life be filled with joy hugs Anna so the next step is to iron my post card onto the Tim Tech's so let's let hey let's go do that I have to be careful around the B so now my postcard both sides are stuck to that Tim Tex and the next step is to do the satin stitch around the edge so we're going to do that next I press both sides to the Tim Tex thread here my back side my front side now I'm going to do a tight like a satin or a zig-zag stitch all around the edge to kind of finish it off make it a nice finished edge and because I can never tell quite how I want it I test run my sewing machine on the zig zag and how tight I want it and how wide I want that to us exact to be because it's not gonna look like a zig-zag stitch when I'm when I'm done with it I'm just gonna fill the hole outside edge and the good thing about this is that I have like made a mistake before oh my geez you know don't tell anybody and the thing about it is you can just go right over the top of it if it's not tight enough or you didn't get it you know where it's nice smooth all the way around the edge you just kind of see exact over the top of it again so there's no big thing about that so I'm going to start here I changed the foot on my machine and we're going to and this takes a long time because it's such a tight little zig zag and takes quite a bit of breath because I'm selling one-handed I heard the thread break so I'm going to razor in it go but it is looking nice looking nice so you can see how I'm going around the edge I'm just gonna cut the hairs off but here I still have to go back around the bottle this side right here because it's not quite tight enough so that's what we're doing but I've got a rethread my machine obviously was pushing it too hard okay time for a break I think I need to clean out my bobbin casing stay tuned well it was my dirty machine and I spared you the video of me tearing apart my bobbin casing and cleaning all of the dust and fuzz and dirt out of there obviously I had not done that in a long time and so I I love these little you know pipe cleaners to get down in there and quote works in Bend anytime you go shopping they give you one and I know I could buy a ton of these at some drugstore but I don't know it's fun getting something free himself I think I need to go shopping again because these really work for getting down in there and getting that dust out of there so that was the problem and here is the finished postcard so I cannot wait to see how Myrna frames this I am going to um not by my own card back I did that one year I know I've admitted that but um notice her framing it's just so spectacular that said high desert frameworks and but this is a lot of fun and it's fun to send these to your friends you know to have spent a little time making something and then sending it along and I love that so well thank you so much for hanging out with me I hope that she does some great editing he'd like to watch me dig you know clean and so for so long but we really appreciate you spending this rainy day with us senator and I hope I see you around in the next video [Music] [Music]

Channel: Quilt Roadies

Views: 31,948

Rating: 4.8158379 out of 5

Keywords: Quilt Roadies, Fabric Postcard, Jean Wells, Karla Alexander, Tonye Belinda Phillips, Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show, Sisters Oregon

Id: RPYz77qtxhc

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2019